One: Wonderland

Summary

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Rabbit Hole – Episode 1: "Wonderland"

Podcast: Rabbit Hole
Host: The New York Times (Narrator: Kevin Roose)
Date: April 16, 2020

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Overview

The episode "Wonderland" inaugurates the Rabbit Hole series, with NYT tech columnist Kevin Roose asking: What is the Internet doing to us? To answer this, the episode introduces Caleb Kane, a 26-year-old who became deeply immersed in YouTube. Through Caleb's story, the episode explores themes of online identity, loneliness, YouTube’s algorithm, and how digital platforms can shape the ideology and psychology of their users. Along the way, we also meet Guillaume Chaslot: a former Google engineer whose work on YouTube’s recommendation AI left him wrestling with its unintended consequences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Caleb Kane's Early Internet Experience

• Caleb’s background sets the scene—raised by grandparents, bullied at school, shy and isolated, video games and YouTube became his refuge.
  • “So Zelda was a big one, Donkey Kong.” (04:02)
  • Internet and YouTube were first described as “an escape.”
    • “I don't know what I would have done without the Internet... It was like an escape.” – Caleb Kane (04:03–04:07)
• YouTube was, at first, a benign world full of comedy and viral videos—a place to feel less alone.
  • “It was sort of nicer than your real life in some cases.” – Interviewer (05:41)

2. Early Politicization and YouTube’s Role

• Caleb was "anti-authority," influenced by punk music and Michael Moore documentaries.
  • “Most of my politics as a teenager came from California, like dead Kennedys... and Michael Moore documentaries." – Caleb Kane (06:04)
• Also drawn to New Atheist videos—Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins.
• Early YouTube felt "edgy" and subversive for showing ideas rarely voiced in real life.
  • “They felt subversive. They felt like watching people say the uncomfortable thing.” – Interviewer (06:47)

3. Emotional Downturn and Deepening Internet Immersion

• Unable to succeed at college, Caleb returns home, depressed, isolated, with only a slow computer and YouTube for comfort.
  • “Just me in a room and a bed.” – Caleb Kane (08:15)
  • “My gaming computer got stolen... now I have a crappy little computer... but it can run YouTube.” (08:27)

4. Descent into Self-Help and the Recommendation Rabbit Hole

• Caleb finds self-help content—Tony Robbins, Zen Buddhism, and discovers Stefan Molyneux’s channel.
  • “What dream or vision do you want to turn into reality?” (09:46)
  • “To be truly free is... both very easy and very hard.” – Stefan Molyneux (10:23)
• Molyneux’s philosophy and seeming empathy gave Caleb hope and companionship.
  • “He talks about how much he loves his daughter. I was like, I want all that stuff. I just wanted a stable family.” – Caleb Kane (13:18)
• Positive effects: more socialization, work at Dairy Queen, but also increasing dependency on YouTube.
  • “Probably at that point, 10, 12, 13, 14 hours a day... I sound like a crazy person, but that's what I would do.” – Caleb Kane (15:14–15:24)

5. The Algorithm as the Invisible Hand (Guillaume Chaslot’s Story)

• Guillaume Chalot: AI scientist, hired by Google to work on YouTube’s recommendations.
  • “So when I joined Google... I was the perfect fit.” – Guillaume Chalot (18:30)
• Original algorithms optimized for clicks; this encouraged clickbait. Later, the metric changed to watch time (how long people watch videos).
  • “The idea was to maximize watch time at all costs, to just make it grow as big as possible.” – Guillaume Chalot (20:08)
• The unintended consequence: “filter bubbles”—users see more of the same, never challenged with new perspectives.
  • “...the recommendation engine can say, oh, you watched a cat video, so we are going to give you another cat video and then another cat video...” – Guillaume Chalot (21:39)

6. Filter Bubbles & Polarization

• Example from Cairo protests: users only see videos supportive of the side they started watching (protesters OR police), leading to “two different realities.”
  • “So you would only see the side of protesters... You start with the side of the police. You would only see the side of the police.” – Guillaume Chalot (22:54–23:05)
• Guillaume’s attempts to create algorithms against filter bubbles are ignored; watch time remains the corporate objective.
  • “No, they were always just prototype...never tested on real users.” – Guillaume Chalot (24:12)
  • “...when I proposed the third project to my manager, he told me, if I were you, I wouldn't work on it too much... Then I got fired for bad performance review...” – Guillaume Chalot (24:58–25:28)

7. The Real-Life Consequences

• On a Paris bus, Guillaume notices a fellow passenger binging conspiracy videos, led on by the very algorithm he helped create.
  • “...He was watching conspiracy theories about a secret plan to kill 2 billion people.” – Guillaume Chalot (26:43)
• No matter Guillaume’s counter-arguments, the sheer volume of similar videos convinced the rider it must be true.
  • “But I couldn't debunk the plot because he told me, like, there are so many videos like that. It has to be true.” – Guillaume Chalot (27:23)
• Sense of responsibility, even guilt, sets in:
  • “It was pretty intense because I knew the number. So I knew that this was not just one person. This...was millions of people...” – Guillaume Chalot (27:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“I don't know what I would have done without the Internet... It was like an escape.”
— Caleb Kane (04:03–04:07)

“It was sort of nicer than your real life in some cases.”
— Interviewer (05:41)

“Probably at that point, 10, 12, 13, 14 hours a day... I sound like a crazy person, but that's what I would do.”
— Caleb Kane (15:14–15:24)

“The idea was to maximize watch time at all costs, to just make it grow as big as possible.”
— Guillaume Chalot (20:08)

“At the time, I was really worried about wasting human potential... is it the right thing to do to...give you again, cats on cats on cats?”
— Guillaume Chalot (22:05)

“When you had only one side of reality, you couldn't see both sides... so these two different realities were created.”
— Guillaume Chalot (23:14–23:20)

“But I couldn’t debunk the plot because he told me, like, there are so many videos like that. It has to be true.”
— Guillaume Chalot (27:23)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• 00:54–02:13 — Introduction to Caleb’s story and YouTube radicalization
• 03:19–05:49 — Caleb’s childhood loneliness, finding online community
• 06:21–07:29 — Early political and YouTube influences
• 08:07–08:27 — Caleb’s depressive return home and immersion in YouTube
• 09:46–13:18 — Descent into self-help content and Stefan Molyneux fandom
• 14:00–15:24 — All-consuming YouTube use
• 16:01–19:16 — Introduction to Guillaume Chaslot’s work at Google/YouTube
• 20:08–24:32 — Explanation and consequences of the algorithm; ignored warning signs
• 25:44–27:31 — Guillaume’s revelation of algorithmic harm in real world (bus story)
• 22:54–23:20 — Filter bubbles and "two different realities" explained

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Tone & Style

The episode is intimate and reflective, mixing Caleb’s conversational, sometimes self-deprecating openness with investigative clarity from the interviewer. There’s a palpable sense of wonder giving way to unease, as technological optimism shades into regret and alarm about unintended consequences. At every step, personal experience and systemic analysis intertwine—humanizing the story of how algorithms affect real lives.

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Summary Flow

• Personal journey of digital immersion and alienation.
• Investigation into how algorithmic systems (like YouTube recommendations) not only shape viewing habits, but also entrench beliefs and filter reality.
• Case study from an insider (Guillaume) illustrating how good intentions can have troubling outcomes.
• Raises urgent questions about digital platforms’ influence on individuals and societies, and the difficulty of steering algorithms toward more positive outcomes.

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This episode sets the stage for Rabbit Hole's series-long exploration: how our lives, desires, and minds are shaped as we journey deeper down the Internet’s rabbit hole—sometimes willingly, sometimes not.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Take a spin.

[Caleb Kane]

Now you're in with the techno set. You're going surfing on the Internet.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

It's another day in the life of the Jamesons. Maybe a family a little bit like yours. Except it's not really just another day. Today's the day I'm taking my family surfing around the world on the Internet.

[Guillaume Chalot]

It's cool.

[Caleb Kane]

Dad's finally installed the Internet on our home computer. Now I can surf the net anytime I want.

Test, test.

[Housemate/Other Participant]

What.

[Caleb Kane]

Is this, a state line?

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

I just saw the West Virginia Welcome Center.

[Caleb Kane]

Wild, wonderful West Virginia with Jim Justice.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Well, the governor's name is Jim Justice. I feel like the campaign signs, like, make themselves, you know, Justice.

[Caleb Kane]

Okay, so just, like, tell me the story and I'll poke you on the way. Okay?

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

This is our accent here. So last year, you and I hopped in a.

[Caleb Kane]

Can you just in the time we have here, can you just tell me, like, what are you up to today and what are you hoping to find out?

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

To meet this guy. His story is really interesting.

[Caleb Kane]

So he.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Says that he was radicalized through YouTube videos and spent several years becoming progressively more extreme in his politics. After this shooting in New Zealand last March, there was a lot of talk about online radicalization. The shooter was a white nationalist who clearly spent a lot of time in far right Internet communities. I've been looking for a good case study of how it happens to just one person, what that path looks like. And I kept hearing over and over again from sources I was talking to. In this world, like, you have to look at YouTube. There are elements of it that seem very familiar to me and some that don't seem so familiar. We're gonna have him walk us through it. Just missed our turn. I was so excited about this that I missed my turn. So we drove down to West Virginia, where he lives. Hey, how's it going? All right, great. He's standing right there. He's on his headphones. Big smile.

[Caleb Kane]

Nice to meet you guys. Hi, Andy.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

This is Andy.

[Caleb Kane]

Andy, I'm gonna stick a microphone around you. That's fine.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He's got a Gorillaz T shirt on.

[Caleb Kane]

Hey.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He says hi and brings us into his friend's house. Kevin, nice to meet you. Thank you for letting us crash your house here. And the first thing he does is.

[Caleb Kane]

I'm gonna just set this over here. Can you describe what it is that you're setting down? A Glock 43.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Pull out his gun. Is that the first time you've had a gun?

[Caleb Kane]

I've liked firearms my whole life. I'm not against firearms. But yeah, that's. I've always been like, well, I don't really need one. But then the day after I got death threats, went out and bought one. I probably never have to use it. These guys usually just like send SWAT teams to your house and shit like that. But, you know, it's just to be safe.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Where should we sit? Where's the best place for us to sit?

[Stefan Molyneux]

Here.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Eventually we go over, we sit on the couch.

[Caleb Kane]

Give me a little test here.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Oh, sure. Testing, 1, 2, 3. Do re me. And he starts telling what begins, like a pretty relatable and familiar story. So can you just start, like, tell us your name and how old you are.

[Caleb Kane]

Yeah, my name's Caleb Kane. I'm 26 years old. I was born in Florida, but I grew up here in West Virginia.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

When did you move to West Virginia?

[Caleb Kane]

My mother had me with some man that I never met. And then she, like immediately left Florida, I guess. I don't know all the details there.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He had kind of a rough childhood, as he describes it.

[Caleb Kane]

Got raised by my grandparents.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Didn't really have a lot of friends. What were you like as a kid?

[Caleb Kane]

Really shy and nerdy. Picked on on the bus.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Didn't really feel like you fit in.

[Caleb Kane]

Going to high school was hell. I hated it. I saw everybody's conformist.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Like a lot of teenagers. He got really into video games.

[Caleb Kane]

So Zelda was a big one, Donkey Kong.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And then he discovered freshman year of.

[Caleb Kane]

High school is whenever I got high speed. Internet.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

The Internet.

[Caleb Kane]

I don't know what I would have done without the Internet.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

This thing is awesome.

[Caleb Kane]

It was like an escape.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And the Internet is a revolution for him because finally that's when I started.

[Caleb Kane]

Playing a lot of online video games.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Oh, shit. In the window of the house, he finds people who are like him.

[Caleb Kane]

People all over the country, all over the world. Oh, that was so good, man.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Oh, nice.

[Caleb Kane]

I met a lot of friends.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

They grow up so quickly. And he develops this new routine where like every day he comes home from school, gets on his computer. All right, this is call of duty 2. Plays a bunch of video games. And then later at night, I turn on YouTube. He goes on YouTube.

And YouTube. At the time, it was.

Forever, mostly. That really hurt. Viral videos and comedy sketches.

[Caleb Kane]

This was like, you know, early, early YouTube. You need to relax, stay up all night and watch like.

And bust up laughing.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

If Caleb didn't feel like he fit in in high school in his sort of physical surroundings, and the categories are potent potency, you wouldn't know it But I like people. YouTube was the place that he felt most at home.

You're speaking to me very deeply here. I experienced this too. Like, I was not cool in high school and I remember the Internet kind of being a place that you would go to, like escape.

[Caleb Kane]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And it was. It was sort of nicer than your real life in some cases.

[Caleb Kane]

You're right. It was nicer back then.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Were you political at the time?

[Caleb Kane]

Political in like a very surface level sense. Right. Like anti authority. And like, you know, most of my politics as a teenager came from California, like dead Kennedys.

And this is Michael Moore. I am here to make a citizens arrest. Michael Moore documentaries. And that influenced me a lot. I mean, I wish that CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about what's going on in this country, whether it's. So there was very much that. That punk rock influence inside of me.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He also got really into these new atheist videos.

[Caleb Kane]

When I say that I think religion poisons everything. I remember watching, like Christopher Hitchens on YouTube. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity. You'd get old uploads. For me, what matters is the truth of like a Richard Dawkins speech.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Nothing special about the Bible.

[Caleb Kane]

Oh, I remember these videos. They felt like kind of scandalous at the time.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Right. They felt subversive. They felt like watching people say the uncomfortable thing.

[Caleb Kane]

God is good and loving and just. And he wanted to guide us morally with a book. Why give us a book that supports.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Slavery by today's standards, obviously, like, this is extremely tame. But at the time, like, this was pretty edgy stuff. So this would have been like early Obama years, right?

[Caleb Kane]

Yeah, early Obama years.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Did you like Obama or what did you feel about him?

[Caleb Kane]

I liked him. I didn't know much about him because I didn't look into actual politics. So I didn't know what he was doing. But yeah, I liked him. I thought, yeah, we have a black president. That's cool. Like, you know, first black president making progress.

[Guillaume Chalot]

What year was it that you graduated high school?

[Caleb Kane]

Graduated 2011. Went to college.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And then he goes off to college. And college, like, just doesn't really take for him.

[Caleb Kane]

I wanted to go and do like an environmental major. And I didn't have a good time. Most of the time I'd stay in my room. Even on nice days when people were out on the quad throwing Frisbees, I'd sit in my room and play video games. And then there was also this embarrassing moment where I got in A fight with this kid on campus and kind of got laughed off of campus. And that night I frickin left. Cause I wasn't going to class anyway. And I just withdrew from my classes and I left and I came back to West Virginia.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

So he moves back in with his grandparents and there like he doesn't have much to do, he doesn't have a job, he doesn't really have a direction.

[Caleb Kane]

Just me in a room and a bed.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He spent a lot of time, slept a lot, feeling depressed, sit in my.

[Caleb Kane]

Basement and just be like so freaking down.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

At one point he even loses his gaming computer.

[Caleb Kane]

My gaming computer got stolen by the way, which really fucking drove me up a wall. And so now I didn't even have video games. Now I have a crappy little computer that can hardly run anything, but it can run YouTube.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Whoa, that's a full rainbow.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And so now he's in his early 20s, he's living at his grandparents house and he feels like at this time in his life when he should be like finding his way, he should be starting a career and thinking about having a family.

Instead he's just watching YouTube.

[Caleb Kane]

All we know is how little we know.

[Guillaume Chalot]

And then the human brain is a network of approximately 100 billion neurons.

[Caleb Kane]

I found a documentary called God is in the Neurons.

[Guillaume Chalot]

When we grow up, our moral and ethical compass is almost entirely forged by.

[Caleb Kane]

Our environment about like cognitive dissonance and like how you can fall into patterns of behavior and since you have neuroplasticity that you can get out of those patterns of behavior.

[Guillaume Chalot]

When we are self aware, we can alter misplaced emotions because we control the thoughts that cause them.

[Caleb Kane]

So I got in this mindset of oh, my brain is just like this tool that I can shape into whatever I want.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And then he stumbles into this emerging wing of YouTube.

[Caleb Kane]

And so I started just going through self help content self help videos. What dream or vision do you want to turn into reality?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

All of our success and failure in life comes from little decisions.

[Caleb Kane]

Cheesy stuff. To be honest with you, the process.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Of conditioning ourselves actually feels incredible.

[Caleb Kane]

Like Tony Robbins and stuff.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Every possesses the potential to be utterly.

[Caleb Kane]

Free of all Zen Buddhism stuff. We want to change our consciousness.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

They're like people with advice specifically for you.

[Caleb Kane]

Continue to do those same behaviors that keep you from making the change.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Guys like Caleb.

[Caleb Kane]

And then to be truly free is.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Both very easy and very hard.

[Caleb Kane]

I found staff.

[Stefan Molyneux]

But we can only be kept in the cages we refuse to see.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

So Stephane Molyneux is this Canadian libertarian, formerly a historian and an entrepreneur. And then he sort of became like a podcaster guy.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Good morning, everybody. It's Stephane Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. I hope that you're doing very well.

[Caleb Kane]

Steph just was in the sidebar one day and I clicked on it.

[Stefan Molyneux]

You really have to open the often iron bound doors of your heart.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

When YouTube sort of early in its life, removed its 15 minute limit on how long videos could be, he just started pumping out hour, two hour long shows called Free Domain Radio.

[Stefan Molyneux]

The approach that we take at Free Domain Radio, the sort of philosophical, Socratic approach that we take, can be very, very helpful for you.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Where he would expound on philosophical ideas.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Philosophy is the all discipline. It covers everything. And that's why to me, it is the most exciting and fundamental.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And Stephane Molyneux is telling him things that, you know, make him feel better. He's saying, this depression that you're going through is not permanent, things will get better. And that a lot of the disillusionment and pain that young men like Caleb are facing is not actually their fault.

[Stefan Molyneux]

From the perspective of a young man, just take a brief look at society.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

It's the fault of society.

[Stefan Molyneux]

I mean, you get, of course, on demand pornography. You get video games that are unbelievably realistic, absorbing and addictive. And what else do they have to look forward to? Well, they can get themselves involved in higher education and graduate an average of $25,000 in debt to a job market that is pretty stagnant or declining. You've seen real wages.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He finds a lot of what he's saying pretty sensible.

[Stefan Molyneux]

College students have damn right to be depressed. Their society is unsustainable because nobody's asking the fundamental questions about why the society is the way it is, why things are so bad.

[Caleb Kane]

I was like, yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And he's not just talking at people. He invites people to send him questions.

[Stefan Molyneux]

I have had a number of requests.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

To do a podcast on how to.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Meet a nice girl, because there are.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

A lot of people, he invites them into his life.

[Caleb Kane]

He would talk about how he grew up.

[Stefan Molyneux]

I was interested in morality from a very early age. I was physically, emotionally and mentally abused.

[Caleb Kane]

And he's talked about how he was so much better. Now.

[Stefan Molyneux]

I have consistently said, if you have problems with your parents, talk to a therapist.

[Caleb Kane]

And he had went to therapy and his life had improved.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Before we met, Christina had spent quite some time working on herself and he.

[Caleb Kane]

Had a wife who would come on stream with him.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

I had struggled with a previous relationship. He has his Wife on his channel. And they talk about their life together.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Watching my daughter learn how to make jokes. Finding out what is funny for her, what is not funny for her, and why. Like, I just, I want to kiss her hair all day.

[Caleb Kane]

Just because, you know, I must kiss your brain. Talks about how much he loves his daughter. I was like, I want all that stuff. I want a family like that. Why? Because that's what I wanted my whole life. I just wanted a stable family. And I thought, well, if I just keep watching more and more, I'll be like, Steph.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Hi, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. Hi, everybody. This is Stephane Molyneux. Hi, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from freedomain Radio.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

I hope you're doing very well. And for Caleb, you can't have happiness without responsibility. Stephane Molyneux, his voice and his videos become a source of stability for him.

[Stefan Molyneux]

There are very specific things that people need to do to be happy.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And Caleb says that all this stuff that he's watching on YouTube, like, it's actually helping.

[Caleb Kane]

Started working at Dairy Queen.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He gets a new job.

[Caleb Kane]

And then I started, like, getting over a lot of my social anxiety because now I'm forced to interact with people and I'm also hanging out with all these things, high school kids.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He starts to feel like things are picking up for him finally.

[Caleb Kane]

And after that, I mean, it was just more and more of that.

I was pretty much always on YouTube.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He's watching not only like the self help stuff from Stefan Molyneux, Great pyramid at Giza. It starts getting pretty into Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is the man, the biggest podcast YouTube talk show guy that there is on the Internet.

[Caleb Kane]

Thank you very much for coming by. Man, this is cool as.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

But back then was just starting to experiment with uploading his interviews to YouTube.

[Caleb Kane]

Anthony Bourdain is with us, ladies and gentlemen.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Hi, everybody.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He just keeps watching and watching.

[Caleb Kane]

You're almost like an accidental ownership of.

[Guillaume Chalot]

What they have done in their life.

[Caleb Kane]

If I wasn't at work, any single moment that I had.

I was watching YouTube videos.

This is episode 500. Probably at that point, 10, 12, 13, 14 hours a day, individuals has bad people.

I sound like a crazy person, but that's what I would do.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And when Caleb talks about watching YouTube videos during this period in his life, he talks about experiencing this as the sensation of falling. But the thing that he doesn't even really know to think about is that on the other side of his screen, there's a force that's pulling him in and that force has to do with a French guy named Guillaume. Guillaume, hello. This is Kevin.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Hey, how are you?

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Doing well, how are you?

[Guillaume Chalot]

Great.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Who even though they've never met.

[Guillaume Chalot]

So, yeah, I think everything is ready.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Is a really important part of Caleb's story.

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[Guillaume Chalot]

I did a PhD in artificial intelligence and then I worked at Microsoft.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Guillaume Chalot is a pretty smart guy. You studied how to make robots, essentially.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Got his doctorate studying machine learning. And then in 2010, he got his dream job working at Google.

[Guillaume Chalot]

And so when I joined Google, I actually didn't know which project I would be put on.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And when he gets to Google, he gets this really interesting and exciting assignment.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Yeah, it turned out they needed someone on the AI of YouTube, so I was the perfect fit.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And the project he's assigned to work on is ultimately what distinguishes YouTube from every other website on the Internet. And that has to do with the recommendations sidebar and the artificial intelligence that makes the whole thing work. And did this seem to you like a big deal to be given a job at Google working on YouTube recommendations?

[Guillaume Chalot]

Yeah, that was really Amazing at first to realize that my work was going to be affecting so many people. So I thought it was going to be a good thing. I thought, okay, we can make artificial intelligence to make the world a better place.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And when you got there, I assume there was some algorithm that was selecting videos for people. How did that algorithm work?

[Guillaume Chalot]

Yeah, so initially when YouTube started, what's best was, like, clicks. Like, the more people clicked on the videos, the better they thought it was. And then they realized that it led to too many clickbaits. So people would click on the title, then realize that the video was not at all about what was said in the title, and then they would leave the platform immediately. So that would be actually bad for YouTube. So then they switched their measure to total watch time.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And how was the goal of this algorithm explained to you? What did you understand about what YouTube's executives wanted?

[Guillaume Chalot]

The idea was to maximize watch time at all costs, to just make it grow as big as possible.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

It seems like a simple shift, but that shift has radical consequences.

[Caleb Kane]

YouTube's watch time has gone up by 50%, seeing extension, accelerating usage growth.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

It produces these numbers that no one has ever seen before.

[Caleb Kane]

YouTube now pulls in more than a billion dollars a quarter. So it's an incredible size of audience. We're consuming ever more video content. It's not so much if you're watching.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

YouTube, it's how much.

How are you feeling about your work at this point?

[Guillaume Chalot]

I think we were so excited on working on this project that we didn't really question too much that watch time was a good metric. We were think, yeah, I mean, if people are watching longer, they might be happier about what they're watching. So at the time, I felt pretty good about this. Yeah.

[Caleb Kane]

If I had a moment to stick earbuds in my ear to reject how.

[Stefan Molyneux]

We are viewed by others, any single.

[Caleb Kane]

Moment that I wasn't talking to someone, I was consuming content. Hey, everybody. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by sports.

[Guillaume Chalot]

But then I realized.

There were some issues. People were noticing that you had a problem with maximizing just watch time, that it creates these filter bubbles.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Say more about that.

[Guillaume Chalot]

The way I explained it when I was at YouTube at the time was.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Say hi to everybody.

[Guillaume Chalot]

When you watch a cat video.

Then the recommendation engine can say, oh, you watched a cat video, so we are going to give you another cat video and then another cat video and then another cat video. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same.

At the time, I was really worried about wasting human potential. If you could Go on all of YouTube. But then the thing that going to keep you watching the most is cats. Is it the right thing to do to. To give you again, cats on cats on cats.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And over time, Guillaume realizes that this filter bubble problem he's been noticing, it's actually worse than everyone just watching the same cat videos over and over.

[Guillaume Chalot]

So at the time, it was a demonstration in Cairo.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

In Cairo, Egypt?

[Guillaume Chalot]

Yes.

[Caleb Kane]

Violence has erupted in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, as those.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

He sees this news videos, these political videos, like this conflict in Egypt that's going on at the time, and he sees that the algorithm is showing people in different groups the same thing over and over.

[Guillaume Chalot]

And you would see a video from the side of the protesters, and then it will recommend another video from the side of protesters. So you would only see the side of protesters.

You start with the side of the police. You would only see the side of the police.

When you had only one side of reality, you couldn't see both sides.

So these two different realities were created.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Once you recognized that there were these filter bubbles, these sort of algorithmic echo chambers, what did you do about it?

[Guillaume Chalot]

So the first thing I didn't want to do is complain about it and try to find the bad example that shows what's wrong with it, because I didn't want to be the grumpy French guy who complains. So what I did is side projects I created with another engineer who's still at YouTube, we created an algorithm that did the exact opposite. It got out of the filter bubble.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And did any of these side projects have any impact at YouTube? Like, did they move into testing? Were they implemented? Did managers like them?

[Guillaume Chalot]

No, they were always just prototype, but then they were never even test on real users.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

And why do you think that is?

[Guillaume Chalot]

I mean, the way they were saying it is that, okay, it's not our objective. And our objective was to increase watch time.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

So the problem of political polarization, of giving people only one side of a story. You're noticing this problem While you're at YouTube and it sounds like you were trying to address it through these side projects, but your bosses are not saying, guillaume, that's the best idea we've ever heard. Let's put it live on the site right now. How did things unfold from. For you at YouTube? From there?

[Guillaume Chalot]

Yeah. So when I proposed the third project to my manager, he told me, if I were you, I wouldn't work on it too much. And then for a few months, I didn't work on it. And then when I started working on it again, Then I got fired for bad performance review, which is true because then I spend so much time on this project that I spend less time on my main project.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

So Guillaume left Google. He actually left Silicon Valley altogether and moved back to France. And he says that he kind of stopped thinking about the YouTube algorithm altogether.

Until one day, like an old French romance, the two meet again.

[Guillaume Chalot]

I was in a bus ride from Lyon to Paris. So it was a six hour bus ride. I was working in Paris, but I had family in Lyon. So I was visiting my family and then coming back to work in Paris. And there were these new buses with WI fi. So I thought, okay, let's give it a try.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

So he's sitting there on the bus, he's on his laptop, he's doing some work, and he notices that on the.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Screen next to him, my Neighbor was watching YouTube videos.

For a very long time.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

The guy was just going from one recommended video to the next recommended video to the next to the next to the next.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Part of me was pretty proud that, well, I worked on this algorithm. So I helped him watch so much content.

I was kind of curious which recommendations were so good that he was so captivated by YouTube.

Then I saw that he was watching conspiracy theories about a secret plan to kill 2 billion people.

So naturally I tried to make a joke with him. Oh, who wants to kill us? To try to initiate conversation. And he told me, oh, there is this secret plan. Look at it. Because medias are not going to tell you about it, but if you look on YouTube, you'll find all the truth. Then we talked about the videos. I could debunk videos one by one, but I couldn't debunk the plot because he told me, like, there are so many videos like that.

It has to be true.

It was pretty intense because I knew the number. So I knew that this was not just one person. This, it was millions of people who were in these situations.

[Stefan Molyneux]

Hi everybody. Stefan molined here from Freedom Main radio. Let's dip into the listener mailbag of question, shall we?

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

Try to see how far we can go back in the search if we search history. Like down there. Yeah, the number one news network on cable.

[Caleb Kane]

Yep, yep, yep. I remember this. Okay, now, I mean, when you look.

[Interviewer/Documentarian]

At Hollywood, this is a Jewish cultural system designed to market.

[Guillaume Chalot]

Why would I want my nation to be populated by and reflect the culture of people who have come from all other places in the world?

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